LinkedIn for Entrepreneurs: 7 Essential Steps to Networking and Success

LinkedIn is one of the hottest spots for entrepreneurs to seek opportunities for collaboration, investment, and sales. But those opportunities won’t come simply by creating an account on the platform. You need to have the qualification to get them—a powerful personal brand.

In this post, we’ll show you seven essential steps you should perform on your LinkedIn account to grow on the platform. We’ll also introduce to you the best entrepreneurs who lead the voice on LinkedIn today.

Why Use LinkedIn as an Entrepreneur

There’s no better place than LinkedIn to build a strong network as an entrepreneur. Here’s what the current LinkedIn statistics say:

• With more than 77% of LinkedIn users situated outside the United States, you can get the chance to expand your entrepreneurial reach overseas.
• You can network with about 141 million users who log in to LinkedIn on a daily basis.
• Elevate the customer perception of your brand, as five out of ten brands are seen as better in quality by advertising on LinkedIn.
• Generate leads and sales using more targeted searches and improved ad reach.
• Absorb valuable talent into your business from a huge pool of applicants.

How to Grow and Network as an Entrepreneur on LinkedIn

It’s the era of personal branding. As an entrepreneur, you know how important it is to build a compelling brand to gain a foothold in the industry. Here are seven proven strategies that you should follow to grow and seize networking opportunities on LinkedIn.

1. Improve Your LinkedIn Profile

Expanding your network and obtaining good business leads are parts of a two-way avenue. For other LinkedIn users to interact with you, you should first optimize your profile to establish your credibility. Here are a few effective ideas you can try:

• Directly state what you do on your headline. Do something like “Disruptive Innovator, Visionary Leader, & Entrepreneur” instead of starting with “I help people….” If you don’t have any useful ideas, try using a headline generator.
• Make sure your face is clearly visible in your profile. Use a clean background, too. Alternatively, explore colorful backgrounds reflective of your brand to draw attention.
• Display your expertise on your LinkedIn banner. Write it in clear text. Also, make sure to apply your brand theme to your banner.
• Create a skimmable About section. Businessmen and investors: save time. Make your profile visitors know about you in detail, in bullet points.
• Ask for recommendations. Testimonials back up everything you said on your account summary, so make sure to have them on your profile.

2. Post Interesting Content

LinkedIn posts are a great opportunity for you to promote your brand or business. It also allows you to generate warm leads and start discussions in the field. Here are some of the best things that you can post about on LinkedIn as an entrepreneur:

• Insights on the latest trends in business, marketing, and similar topics
• Features and reviews of your products and services
• Open-ended questions about people’s opinions on business ideas
• Polls
• Entrepreneurial milestones that you’ve reached
• Advice and mentorship for aspiring young entrepreneurs

Apart from these ideas, you can also check out and be inspired by what the best entrepreneurs on LinkedIn are talking about on their accounts.

3. Stay Active

Staying consistent with your LinkedIn posts showcases the time, effort, and commitment you have for your business. But more than that, it also helps keep your account relevant to LinkedIn users.

Especially when you use good keywords and hashtags, consistent posting will push your account to bigger audiences. Other entrepreneurs are already doing it, and not jumping onto the bandwagon would be a huge mistake on your part.

From a business-minded perspective, you can minimize your efforts and achieve twice the results by investing in tools for content creation. Precisely, Taplio’s content generator, when paired with its post scheduler, would be a powerful tool to leverage.

4. Engage With Your Audience

Every LinkedIn user that’s part of your audience can potentially be your client, investor, collaborator, competitor, and business partner. Hence, keeping close relations with them would be a great move.

You don’t have to be overly fancy, though. Simple engagement, such as likes, comments, and shares, can do the trick. Instead, what you want to ensure is how to consistently engage with them.

5. Use DMs to Connect With Warm Leads

Apart from audience interaction, you can take things a notch further using direct messages and InMails on LinkedIn. InMails would be very appropriate if you want to communicate with someone currently outside of your network of connections.

If you’re having a hard time identifying whom to send a DM to, you might find Taplio’s CRM feature useful. It automatically imports the LinkedIn profiles that interact with your posts.

All you need to do is craft a personalized message for each of them, which you can shorten further with the help of Taplio’s DM assistant.

6. Use Visuals in Your Content

Plain texts are boring and likely make LinkedIn users veer from your posts. You can solve this by incorporating images and videos in your posts, as they can drive better engagement and boost viewing time.

Aside from being engagement boosters, multimedia content also makes it easier to communicate concepts. For example, you can use an infographic to present one of your business processes instead of using several text blocks.

Tech entrepreneur Mary Spio does a great job at this. Her business primarily deals with the metaverse, which is best shared with video and image content.

7. Utilize LinkedIn Features for Lead Generation

LinkedIn isn’t just a networking platform. It’s also a search engine, an advertising tool, and a massive lead generator for business-minded individuals.

If you’re looking to absorb budding talents into your business, LinkedIn Search and its powerful filters would help you find the right group of individuals. You can also post jobs directly on the platform.

On the other hand, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Ads are two features that you should leverage if you want to expand your reach and connect with potential customers at scale.

10 Entrepreneurs You Should Be Following on LinkedIn

As an entrepreneur, you need to have a high vision. See how far the top entrepreneurs on LinkedIn have reached.

1. Tiffany Dufu

Author of the best-selling book “Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less,” Tiffany Dufu is a women’s advocate who founded The Cru, a tech company focused on helping women achieve their goals.

2. Mary Spio

Founder of CeekVR, Mary Spio is an entrepreneur and keynote speaker with a focus on Web3 and the metaverse. Before her entrepreneurial ventures, she had a deep background in space engineering and has worked with big institutions like The Boeing Corporation and the United States Air Force.

3. John Henry

John Henry is a founder (or co-founder) of four different ventures, including the insurance company, LOOP, Harlem Capital, Cofound Harlem, and Mobile City Services. He also hosted HUSTLE, a VICE TV series.

4. Codie A. Sanchez

Codie A. Sanchez is the founder of Contrarian Thinking, a media company. Before founding her company, she had a strong background in investment and sales, having held directorial and head positions.

5. Maynard Webb

Author of the best-selling book “Dear Founder,” Maynard Webb is the founder of Webb Investment Network. He is also a board member of powerful institutions like Visa and Salesforce.

6. Jake Karls

Jake Karls is recognized as one of the brightest young entrepreneurs in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. He co-founded Mid-Day Squares, a chocolate company.

7. Lisa Hurley

Lisa Hurley is an entrepreneur and activist, with her work centering on Black women. With this goal, she founded the award-winning private membership community, The Great Exhale.

8. Melissa Snover

Melissa Snover is the founder of Nourished, a company offering personalized nutritional snacks made using patented 3D printing technology.

9. Dan Price

Dan Price is the founder of Gravity Payments, one of the most trusted credit card processing companies in the United States. It aims to help small business owners by offering lower costs and better transparency.

10. Magnus Grimeland

Magnus Grimeland is the founder of Antler, a venture capital firm that has invested in more than 600 companies worldwide. Grimeland was also a co-founder of ZALORA.

Make Your LinkedIn Journey Easier With Taplio

Taplio offers an extensive set of features and tools that make it easier for entrepreneurs to network on LinkedIn.

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Start building your brand, generate warm leads, and build valuable connections for your entrepreneurial ventures. Try Taplio now!